A frenzied exit!

We are officially back in the US after being quiet on the blog front for a few months now. Many apologies to everyone but thank you for your patience with us.

Our exit from K-land was stressful to say the least but we made it back eventually!!

Our plane was initially cancelled due to horrendous fog (one of the down sides of where the airport is located there.) Abi's seemingly faultless plan for us to have one extremely long day of travelling and then be at our house was foiled completely!! Anyway.....we called the airline and airport a couple of times during the morning to be told they still had fog. The cloud was lifting in Peja and there was beautiful sunshine so it was hard to believe that fog would still be a problem. At 12.15pm we received a call from the airline to tell us that if we wanted to be on our flight it was now taking off from Skopje in Macedonia and in order to board the flight we needed to be there by 4pm at the very latest. The city of Skopje is a 4 hour drive when the border is good and the airport is another 45 mins the other side of the border!!!!!! We left extremely hurriedly in 2 cars, having had to switch our drivers due to license issues and hurriedly drive around town to pick up passports etc. The journey began........

As soon as we headed down into the area where the airport is in Pristina the fog was SO thick you could barely see in front of you. We had a couple of very scary skids as there was so much ice and snow on the road. During our mad dash for the border we realised that one of the vehicles couldn't take us all the way due to car paper and insurance issues so our friend K started calling colleagues who work in Macedonia to arrange for taxi's with trailers to take us from the other side of the border. Bear in mind we were moving and had 12 large over the weight limit bags ourselves, a stroller, carry ons for everyone (and a few extra's in there by the end) as well as another friend who was travelling with us and his bags!!! We arrived at the border just gone 3.15 ish, although it is all a blur at this point!! We said hurried goodbyes and loaded ALL the luggage, children, carseat etc into the one truck that was taking us all the way - we needed to get across the border before we could meet the taxis!!!

To say that there were some strange looks would be an understatement!! The guys walked across no mans land and we chugged as slowly as we could, praying all the while we didn't lose any of the bags off the back!!

All went well and we met the taxis the other side, threw the bags on the trailer and hurtled off to the airport. We arrived a few minutes before 4pm - how that happened I will never quite be sure!! We weren't charged for any of our overweight bags as they were so keen for us to get out on the flight. We arrived in Vienna, having been told we would be staying right at the airport hotel there - of course, that was not to be and we had a 30 minute bus ride into the centre to the hotel we were going to be staying in there. By this point though all our bags were checked right through so things were alot more manageable.

We arrived at the airport the next morning to find that for some bizarre reason our passports wouldn't enter into the system. They finally managed to get it to work just as they called our flight, to this day I have no idea why just ours were a problem!!

Exactly half way through the flight there was a commotion across the plane from us and a lady had collapsed. The guy we were travelling thought that they were Albanian, and indeed they were so Brad and I ended up translating for the flight attendants and her distraught mother. That took up quite a while by the time she was stable and we had calmed everyone down, including the Romanians, who by trying to be helpful really were making things alot more complicated and confusing. We collapsed into our seats wondering when it would end!!! What more strange and stressful things were ahead of us before our final destination???

After arriving in the US and a seamless entry and transfer of our bags we heaved a huge sigh of relief, foolishly thinking we were on the home straight - we arrived at our gate for our connecting flight only to find that an error had been made in the rebooking from the day before and Brad wasn't booked onto the flight at all!! By this point we had been travelling for 2 days and we weren't in the most accomodating of moods!! After alot of handwringing, explaining, trying to keep a lid on our tempers they agreed that Brad could take Jems' seat and she could sit on my lat. We were all over the plane which was not as bad as it could have been as it was a small one, but after the journey we had just taken it was a stressful last leg for the children and us. We arrived in Indianapolis relieved to see Brad's parents and our friends Brent and Denise who were all there to haul us and our luggage back to our house!!

We fell into bed around 11pm so thankful and relieved to be there and for the journey to be done with!! We were up at 2am due to jetlag and for the next week watched our new neighbourhood wake up at 2.30am, 3am, 3.30am, 4am etc - you get the picture!!!!! Needless to say our house was completely unpacked by 7am the first morning!!!!

We wont be sad if we never have to experience a journey like that again, but it certainly makes for a good story!!!